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Events, Classes, and Current Activities

Office Hours.
My Spring 2024 Office Hours are Tuesdays, 2-4.  Feel free to contact me if you need an appointment.  

 

This spring I'm teaching a graduate seminar on "The Grotesque" with my distinguished colleague Niklaus Largier, and an upper-division Comparative Literature course called "Literature and the Age of Exploration."

 

Speaking:

 

In April I will be speaking at a conference on the Troubadours, Sonnets, and Song, at Princeton.

I'll also be speaking about the history of cheerfulness to the Emeritus Faculty Center at UC Berkeley.

In September, I'll be talking about music in Cervantes for a conference at the University of New Mexico. 

In late June, I'll be in residence at the Dahlem Humanities Center at the Free University, in Berlin.

 

FOR MUSICAL EVENTS, CHECK OUT THE WEBSITE OF THE CLIFTON STREET REGULARS (www.cliftonstreetregulars.com).  WE PLAY JAZZ IN VARIOUS BAY AREA VENUES.

Also, keep your eyes open for news of the Unheard Melodies Project.  Our EP, "The Shortest Day," is available on Spotify and other streaming venues.

 

 I'm working on developing a course about the music and lyrics of Paul Simon, which I hope to offer through Stanford's online Continuing Education Program sometime in the next year. 

 

 

Recent Teaching:

Summer 2022:  Paris in the Jazz Age:  Stanford Continuing Education.

Fall 2023:  Joni Mitchell:  Stanford Continuing Education.

Fall 2021:  Comparative Literature 20:  "The Good Life" MWF, 1-2.

Beginning October 11, "The Songs and Poetry of Leonard Cohen," Stanford Continuing Studies Program,

Spring 2021:  French 220, "Montaigne."

Fall 2020:  Comp Lit 20, "Shakespeare and the World"

  Comp Lit 24:  "Read a Classic: Cervantes's 'Don Quixote'"

Spring 2020:  Comp Lit 190, "Writing About Words and Music."

Fall 2018: Comparative Literature 215: Literature and Letters in the Renaissance
With Victoria Kahn.
Fall 2017: Shakespeare and the World, Comp Lit 20
Spring 2017: Comp Lit 215, The Baroque
Fall 2016: French 43: French Culture and the History of Emotion.
Spring 2016: Rabelais and His Friends: Humanism, the Humanities, and the Fate of Reading.
Fall 2015: Literature and the Age of Exploration
Fall 2013: Comparative Literature 24: Bob Dylan and Arthur Rimbaud: Poetry and the Senses
French 220: Renaissance Literature: Topics in Renaissance Literature: Travel and Writing.




Recent Speaking Gigs.

MLA Convention:  San Francisco, January 5-8.  Two presentations:   Round Table on the Beat Generation in San Francisco.  Paper on colonial experience in the early Renaissance. 

   Consult MLA program for details.

January 22, 2023--Interviewing Joel Coen about his film, "Inside Llewyn Davis," BAMPFA.

January 19:  Stanford Continuing Studies, first meeting of a weekly, 6-week, course, "Bob Dylan:  Twenty-First Century Chronicles."  Enrollment available through Stanford.

May 25:  "Bob Dylan and American Memory,"  Smithsonian Institute Lecture, "Friends of the Smithsonian."  Online.

 June 2022, Keynote, "Bob Dylan and the Beat Generation," at the Bob Dylan Center, University of Tulsa. 

April 2022, "Laughter, Exile, Silence:  The Humanities and the Fate of Reading," Meyerson Research Lecture, UC Berkeley.

February 28, 2022, "Bob Dylan and Mediterranean Cultural Geographies," University of Aix-en-Provence, France

October 22, 2021, "Dante After Dante," Commonwealth Club, SF

October 28, 2021, "Five Things I've Learned Listening to Bob Dylan," Five Things I've Learned Series.-Videocast

March 2021:  Oxford Seminar on Diplomacy. Day and time TBD.

November 2020, Interview on "New Books on the Performing Arts" Podcast.

September 22, 2020, "How To Academy," London (via Zoom), interview about Bob Dylan.

February 13, 2020:  "Bob Dylan Between Words and Music," Stanford University.

June 2-10, 2019: teaching at Workshop on Translation, Linguistics, and Literature, Villa Finaly, Florence, Italy.

May 4, 2019:  Dialogue with Greil Marcus on Bob Dylan, Bay Area Book Festival, Berkeley, CA.

May 2, 2019:  Stanford University Poetics Group, speaking about Bob Dylan's poetics.

April 24, 2019:  Heyday Books, Berkeley.
April 18, 2019: book event for "Bob Dylan's Poetics," Mrs. Dalloway's Books, Berkeley, CA.
April 17, 2019: book chat for "Bob Dylan's Poetics," Townsend Humanities Center, noon.
April 11, 2019: book launch for "Bob Dylan's Poetics," City Lights Books, San Francisco, in dialogue with Dean Wareham.
April 9, 2019: book event for "Bob Dylan's Poetics," Smithsonian, Washington, D.C.
April, 8, 2019: book event for "Bob Dylan's Poetics," Labyrinth Bookshop, Princeton, NJ, with Nigel Smith.
April 2, 2019: Museum of the American Author, Chicago, IL.
March 2019: Renaissance Society of America, Toronto, speaking on Marguerite de Navarre's Heptameron and the construction of character.
March 17-19, 2019: Renaissance Society of America, Toronto, roundtable on Early Modern Diplomacy and Culture.
March 13, 2019: Conversation with Anthony Long about his book, "How to Be Free," Townsend Center, UC Berkeley.
September 2019: "First Lecture" in Humanities at UC Berkeley's "Bear Orientation," on Bob Dylan.
June 2018: "Montaigne on Conversation," Commonwealth Club, San Francisco
May 2018: Commencement Address, Languages and Literatures, UC Berkeley
Dahlem Humanities Lecture, "Bob Dylan Between Poetry and Music," Free University of Berlin
September 2017: On Shakespeare's "Henry VIII and linguistic politics" at "Global Reformation" conference, University of Toronto.
May 2017: "Montaigne's Gaiety," UC Irvine French Department.
October 2016: "Ratification and Tragic Form," USC.
September 19, 2015: "Dylan's Visions of Vision," UC Berkeley English Department
June 6 2015: "Lyric Romanesque," talk at the "Atelier Franco/Américain" Renaissance Workshop, Paris, Sorbonne.
May 2015: Lecture and workshop at University of Copenhagen.
March 2015: Renaissance Society of America, Berlin, speaking about "The Aesthetics of the Cease Fire."